The fight or flight response in the sympathetic nervous system has a fairly specific function. It arouses the individual to run, run away as fast as you can to a happy place where no one ever cries or to take a stab at beating the tar out of the aggressor. Also acceptable is taking a stab at stabbing the aggressor, which still technically falls into the fight category. There is no real third option; it’s pretty much limited to fighting or fleeing.

This is not to say that either course of action is always satisfied in every circumstance where the fight or flight response is activated. In some situations, it can be aroused with the individual stripped of any choice of fleeing or fighting, in a torture situation for example. While under complete and total control of an aggressor — pretty much the definition of torture — a person’s fight or flight response is still activated; there’s just no recourse to defuse the situation. A post on Neurocritic that covers a recent study of torture memos generated during the Bush administration suggests that the continuous stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system can lead to a profound restructuring of the brain.

Trinity College (Dublin) psychologist Shane O’Mara examined the detailed reports and compared them to literature covering the neurological effects of prolonged stress. Extreme and prolonged exposure to stress as is characteristic of torture actually physically changes the neural networks of the brain, increasing the likelihood that the tortured individual will give false information.

A gem from O’Mara is like a unicorn sliding down a rainbow from the clouds:

“Stress hormones provoke and control the ‘fight or flight’ response (the immediate and rapid preparation by body and brain for action in response to threat) which, if overly-prolonged, may result in compromised cognitive neurobiological function (and even tissue loss) in these brain regions.”

Or like a tender kiss from a cherished love:

“Extreme stress studies in Special Operations Soldiers (Morgan et al., 2006) have found impaired visuo-spatial capacity and impaired recall of previously-learned information in stressed soldiers (who undergo stress, including food and sleep deprivation, during training modelled on the experiences of American prisoners-of-war).”

Ultimately, O’Mara finds that torture is counterproductive. His finding supports the CIA’s awareness from as far back as the 1950s (and the production of the KUBARK manual) that black torture — the kind where you’re physically injured — doesn’t work, since the tortured person will tell you anything to get you to stop beating him. O’Mara’s study looks like the first to find that white (psychological) torture could be just as ineffective; not because the person is lying, but because his brain is all kinds of messed up.

Check out SYSK on Facebook and Twitter.

More on HowStuffWorks.com:
Is there a torture manual?
What are the five most prevalent forms of torture and why?
Was there a covert CIA prison system?
When is torture legal?